Dunedin's Octagon Ensemble offers performance opportunities to a variety of local classical musicians, and in recent years they have presented some excellent concerts with ensembles and soloists.
Last Saturday, they gave a recital in St Paul’s Cathedral entitled Echoes from Ngā Hau e Whā — The Four Winds, performing vocal pieces from various countries with nine local vocal soloists, accompanist David Burchell and conductor Daniel Kelly.
The programme opened with Rheinberger’s Abendlied, a very relaxed 1855 close harmony piece. Healey Willan’s 1929 Rise Up, My Love, My Fair One followed with five voices taking individual parts.
Like most of the items, the vocal parts used just one voice, and small groups of confident soloists sang un-conducted, totally focused, relying on each other for pitch and often intricate rhythmic negotiation.
A 1963 setting of the traditional mass Missa Brevis was one of Otago composer Dame Gillian Whitehead’s earliest compositions, and followed trends of the time with dissonance and atonal effects. A contrast was Cantique de Jean Racine, by Faure, which had soft organ accompaniment.
Rīpeka Potiki sang an unaccompanied Lyte/Boberg arrangement of Whakaria Mai/How Great Thou Art in a beautiful and emotional delivery, with clearly enunciated text highlighted by taonga pūoro Jennifer Cattermole.
Of Land and Seas, a 2021 work by Chris Artley, one of New Zealand’s multi-award-winning composers of choral music, was a strongly conducted work in three sections, with piano accompaniment and taonga pūoro — The Mangawhai Headland, Mother Earth Goddess and the final Papatūānuku, which gave meaning as the land which is a mother earth figure who gives birth to all things, including people.
An arrangement of May It Be (Shore) for eight voices by Pacis Eusebe Ndoli Ndahiro concluded an hour of interesting and demanding vocal pieces.
Soloists for the evening were Catherine Daley-Reeves, Griffin Nichol, Natasha Manowitz, Tessa Romano, Christine McLeod, Michelle Walker, Teddy Finney-Waters, Michael Forde and Jonathon Waters.
By Elizabeth Bouman
